


All in a Name

by Merfilly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Magical Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 15:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5133206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rowena approaches Helga with a request. A very specific request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in a Name

Rowena made her way into the cozy kitchen of the small cottage, knowing she would find the person she sought there. If Helga wasn't coddling some student, or teaching the most simplistic, down-to-earth spells, she was to be found in a kitchen. And as Helga had not been in the school proper, that meant she had come to this small retreat.

"Helga, my dear…" Her words failed as Helga turned to face her, besmirched by flour and grease alike. It lifted the corner of Rowena's lips in a slight smile, for how many could look at this woman and even see one of the most powerful witches in the Isles? "You look ridiculous."

Helga beamed for that appraisal, then wiped her hands and face alike on the broad apron she wore. "I've gotten a bit carried away, preparing for Mōdraniht!"

That made Rowena laugh, just slightly, before going to sit in a chair that was not overburdened by the products of Helga's generosity.

"Your contributions will go quite far, and the elves will be pleased to have less work." As Helga nodded to that, Rowena drew a deep breath, causing her perceptive co-founder to actually come closer, moving a basket full of delights, to sit in the other chair at her broad work table.

"Something is on your mind, something more than Mōdraniht," Helga said to encourage her friend to speak up further.

"Yes." Rowena folded her hands together on the table, looking down at them for a long moment. When she looked up, it was with a guarded face and haunted eyes. "Helga, I wish something, now that the school is mostly complete. I wish to give one more thing as my legacy to our culture and history."

Helga nodded at her encouragingly, reaching to rest a hand on her friend's folded ones. "You have more wit and will to do anything you set your mind to than near any of us, for all that the others pride themselves on daring and doing," she said.

Rowena nodded, back straightening at that reminder, the weight of her diadem pressing in comfortingly. This was not, after all, such a thing as to be approached timidly! The mind influenced the body, and Rowena wished her body more than prepared for its next task.

"I wish a child, a daughter I believe, to be on hand for the next generation, for we will not live forever. I wish this most selfishly, and yet in recognition of that selfishness, I have found a solution." She turned her hands over to let Helga's fingers into her palms.

"What solution have you found, my friend?" Helga asked, curious at why Rowena was discussing this with her. Certainly she could have her choice of wizards! After all, she was considered quite beautiful by one and all. Helga had always found her company warmer than her reputation, even! So if she set her eyes on one of them—

"To have you make the child with me, so that perhaps she will be tempered in compassion and joy," Rowena said, breaking Helga's thoughts… and possibly her ability to think for the time being. "It can be done; I've discovered how to transmute the wizard fertility spell to work for any wix! And if we were to do the spell and ritual upon Mōdraniht, it would bring extra power, perhaps, to the child." She caught Helga's fingers tight in her hands. "Please, dearest friend, for you are the only companion who has ever soothed me away from pure thought."

Helga looked at Rowena's face, still fairly speechless, envisioning the future being offered in this request. That there would be another child of hers, this one by Rowena, to be raised here in this place of safety?

"Salazar and Godric are going to swallow their own tongues at this," she finally managed to say. She then showed her knack for seeing hidden truths and layers. "Only, we're to leave it as a riddle for them to puzzle out?" 

Rowena let her breath out in a rush, nodding once. "I'd thought it best, in case the child takes too strongly after me, to let the parentage remain a mystery to them. It will keep Godric off-balance, and make Salazar think about his own stance. After all, he is a friend, yet if he doesn't know whether the child is born to a wix or a commoner, he might find more compassion for those born between our worlds."

"Why, Rowena, that sounds like something I might say," Helga teased her, before rising and sweeping in to hug Rowena tight to her bosom. "We will attend feast… and then I know just the glen for us to perform the ritual in!" 

"Why am I not surprised you know such?" Rowena asked once she could be free of that ample cushioning, looking up to her friend.

"Because you know me as well as you know yourself by now, my dear Rowena!"

* * *

It soothed Helga's more superstitious soul to see the moon at the half-phase, Rowena knew. She also knew Helga would call it 'intuitive' over superstitious. The air was biting with cold, but it was neither snowing nor even sleeting for once as the ladies converged on the chosen glen. Helga saw to the fire they would need, as Rowena supplied a fine, thickly down-filled mat for the ground, and a warmly spun and enchanted blanket to cover with after the ritual. Those two requirements met, Rowena began to shed her cloak and robes, discreetly watching Helga do the same.

There were as many differences in their forms as their could be, it seemed, from Helga's more ruddy appearance and full figure to Rowena's willowy height and more severe features. It led Rowena's mind to cast over which traits would breed through in their daughter. She refused to even consider the idea of a son resulting; it was her will that this child be exactly as she wanted!

"You're staring," Helga said sweetly, setting the last garment aside to turn and face her friend… her lover, and Rowena almost shivered more at the way Helga's eyes on her quickened her pulse.

"So are you, now," Rowena countered. She didn't need to be witty now, didn't want to be the wise one. The diadem was resting neatly in a fold of her cloak; the only thing they needed tonight in the way of magic—

—were the vials she had brewed, which reminded her to move and recover those from the pocket her wand was in. 

Helga accepted hers, noting the way the liquid was thick, more viscous than she normally brewed a potion to. It looked, in fact, a bit like a large sampling of… "Rowena, this isn't, well, an essence? A quite masculine one at that?"

Rowena had to laugh for Helga's question, for her own vial was more like a very thin milk. "No, my dear Helga, it is not." She was still smiling as she tipped her vial up, and Helga took her own down just as swiftly. The gooseflesh on their skin was quite enticing from that point, both for touch and kissing, as the potions coursed through them, beginning the subtle changes that would allow them to create Rowena's child together.

The cold air, the fire burning nearby, safely contained by Helga's magic, and the thick mat were all secondary considerations to their senses, as Helga took charge over her lover, applying her nimble and skillful touch to readying Rowena for this. The wisest witch of her generation let go of all thought when Helga's mouth found her most sensitive points, knowing that each kiss and breath there was touched in magic, seeping the essence of the plumper woman into her own body, where it would shape the daughter she craved.

* * *

The next school session was not quite upon them when Rowena was delivered of her child in the very cottage that she'd first proposed the idea. As her stomach had been late to swell, and Rowena had worn her robes looser as the pregnancy progressed, it was entirely possible neither of their male teachers had truly guessed Rowena's state.

Now, with Helga in attendance, the child was making her life known to the various enchanted animals that kept Helga company. Rowena actually cried to hear those sounds, the first wails of life, and she pushed to sit up better.

"Not quite yet, my dear. Take it from one who's done this; it's a bit of a mess still to finish," Helga assured her, laying the child in a very shallow layer of warm water in her largest cooking pan for the moment. Not quite an auspicious first cradle, but the secrecy necessary to make the riddle of the child's life complete warranted it. The water was nowhere near the babe's mouth as she squalled, and it let Helga finish the delivery and apply healing charms against the slight damage done in passing. "Now you can sit up, my dear Rowena, while I wash the babe up."

"You fuss," Rowena chided, but she found sitting up quite the task. And they said mothers were soft and frail creatures? Ha! Rowena knew now that there was more than a slight effort involved in making new lives exist!

Helga was quickly wiping down the … wriggling, wrinkled, thing that only vaguely looked human. Were all human infants so odd looking? It looked far more incomplete than newborn beasts!

"Stop scrunching your nose up at her, Rowena dear," Helga said. "You'd look a bit odd too if you'd just moved from a cramped room through the eye of a needle into a place too loud and cold and odd for you to cope with!" She got the baby adeptly wrapped in soft kidskin, having worked it specifically for the birth, enchanting it to provide all the protections a baby needed.

"She'll grow out of it. All people do," Rowena reminded herself, applying intellect to the situation. She felt drained, more than she would have expected from such a natural process.

"Have you been considering a name?" Helga asked, even as she sat on the edge of the bed to investigate the baby a little more, now that she was not playing midwife.

Rowena's lips curled, ever so slightly, and she nodded. "I have the perfect hint to the riddle of how I came to have a child."

"Oh?"

"Her name will be Helena."

It took Helga a minute to think that through, but then she started laughing, until she had tears of mirth. So much secrecy to craft a mystery around the baby, and the answer was in her very name! That was so very Rowena, and it made Helga look forward to the future of the school, the child, and life near her friend even more.


End file.
